Most people do the same thing Sharon did when they need work: they look at the job listings and look for a job that they think they can get. This is one of the worst ways to get a job, and actually has the lowest success rate (we’ll discuss the phenomenon in detail in chapter 7). This way of thinking is not design thinking; it’s just grasping whatever might be in reach, and it’s unlikely to result in long-term satisfaction. If the kids are hungry, the bank is about to foreclose on your house, or you owe a guy named Louie a lot of money, then by all means take whatever job you can get.

The Way It Should Be

One thing that you may have noticed is the conspicuous absence of job descriptions that sound like this:

• Looking for candidates who would like to connect their Workview to their Lifeview

• Looking for candidates who believe that good work is found through the proper exercise of their signature strengths

• Looking for candidates with high integrity, the capacity to learn quickly, and high intrinsic motivation; we can teach you all the rest.

Awareness is key to life design, and this is true especially when you are designing your career. If you are aware of the process involved in hiring, in writing job descriptions, in reading résumés, in interviewing (from the employer’s perspective), your success rate in getting a job offer goes way up. Empathy is a crucial element in design thinking, and having empathy—and understanding—for the poor hiring manager buried under a sea of résumés will help you know how to design a more effective job hunt. Effectiveness in getting hired involves a simple yet important design reframe.

8: Designing Your Dream Job

“As we said earlier, we don’t recommend mining the Internet for a job. In fact, in the United States only 20 percent of all the jobs available are posted on the Internet—or posted anywhere, for that matter. This means a full four out of five jobs that are available, are not available through the standard model of job hunting. It’s a staggering number; no wonder so many people feel frustrated and rejected when job seeking.

How can you break into this hidden job market? Well, you can’t. No one can. There is no such thing as breaking into the hidden job market. The hidden job market is the job market that’s only open to people who are already connected into the web of professional relationships in which that job resides. This is an insider’s game, and it’s almost impossible to get inside that web as a job seeker. But it’s quite possible to crack into the network as a sincerely interested inquirer—someone just looking for the story (not looking for the job). That’s how this works. It is a wonderfully happy accident that the very best technique you can use to learn what kind of work you might want to pursue (prototyping with Life Design Interviews, as discussed in chapter 6) is exactly the best, if not only, way to get into the hidden job market in your field of interest, once you know what you want.

Donald used the mind-set of curiosity to reframe his complaint, “Why the hell am I doing this?,” into a new question, “What is so interesting around there that it keeps all these people coming back to this company day after day?” He followed that question into lots of Life Design Interviews with his colleagues, looking for the ones who were really enjoying themselves and had figured out just what the hell they were doing there. When he combined his insights from those stories with the results from his Good Time Journal, the pattern was clear. The way to get re-energized was to refocus on the people. He discovered that he wasn’t in the wrong place, he was just in the wrong state of mind. He’d gotten so preoccupied with the what and the how of business success and family responsibilities that he’d completely forgotten the why and the who. He reinvented himself without having to change anything about his situation. Reframing his work from “getting the job done” to “creating a dynamic culture where my employees love their work” was transformative.